For
as well as being blessed with sun-kissed paradise islands and pale,
white sands, this tourist haven is cursed with mounting evidence of
an environmental catastrophe. www.news.bbc.co.ukThe
country is portrayed by travel companies as a tropical paradise To
the naked eye, the signs of climate change are almost imperceptible,
but government scientists fear the sea level is rising up to 0.9cm a
year.

Since 80% of its 1,200 islands are no
more than 1m above sea level, within 100 years the Maldives could
become uninhabitable.

On the
capital island of Male, where 80,000 people live less than 4 ft.
above sea level, the margin of safety is increasingly slim.

A12_s3

North
and South Malosmadulu Atolls are in the Maldives, an island republic
in the northern Indian Ocean, southwest of India.

The
Maldives are made up of a chain of 1,192 small coral islands, which
are grouped into clusters of atolls. It has a total area of 298
square kilometers and a population of about 330,000.

The
capital and largest city is Male, with a population of about 80,000.
Arguably the lowest-lying country in the world, the average elevation
is just 1 meter above sea level.

Area:
298 sq km. The country consists of 1,200 coral islands – out of
of which 201 are inhabited – grouped in a double chain of
twenty-seven atolls. Most atolls are ringshaped coral reefs
supporting five to ten inhabited islands and twenty to sixty
uninhabited islands.

Average
size of islands one to two kilometers and height of 1.5 meters above
sea level.

This
garland of 1,190 coral islands is situated southwest of India. Among
the country’s islands, 200 are inhabited and about 80 are
popular tourist resorts favoured by scuba divers for their abundant
marine life.

Permanent
submersion, repeated flooding, faster erosion of cliffs and beaches,
and increasingly saline estuaries and salt contamination of
groundwater are just some of the possible consequences of a big rise
in sea level in low-lying regions.

Kelai
Island, a piece of paradise in the Maldives has a population of about
2000 people.

But there
is a dark cloud hanging over the island as climate change makes the
sea level rise.

The island
lies just 2 meters above sea level and 30% of the island has
dissapeared during the last 50 years and it might be gone during my
lifetime...

A
substantial decline in agricultural productivity and other climate
change impacts throughout the Asia-Pacific could lead to the
large-scale population displacement of hundreds of millions of
people. Woodruff, Hales, et al. (2005). op
cit.

the
number of displaced people within the Asia-Pacific region is likely
to increase by hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom will be
internally confined within slums and camps.